I do have a question, will those fences remain in place and not be damaged by uncaring folks?

If someone really wants to run them over, there's not much that can be done. However, we bury these 3 feet deep and 4 feet deep if we think people will try ramming it. Buck and rail fencing is a waste of time. It will be knocked over within a few days. The post and rail fences (like in the above pics) last 6-12 months usually before someone tries to knock them down. We have the clubs involved in adopt-a-road do projects once a month so we can find damage and fix it more often before it becomes an issue. We keep fixing the fences, and eventually people stop trying to break them.

On the Rubicon work weekend, when we built some fences, we also put signs on them saying it was off limits behind the signs.

Yes, it's a good idea. We do this sometimes as well, but I tend to think that the fence should be all the necessary indication that users shouldn't continue past the fence. We usually mix them with natural barriers (trees, terrain, rocks, etc) so there is a solid barrier with no obvious route around the fence. If we put fencing around dispersed campsites to remove vehicles, we always put up "NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES" signs next to "AREA OPEN FOR CAMPING" signs so people know they can walk through the fence for camping. Considering the cost of carsonites and stickers, we have to pick and choose where we can install this kind of signage. For more permanent signs, we use laser cut steel so it is shotgun proof.

I will add an observation. In posting results on various sites of our big NPLD projects the last two years, I have noticed that not many OHV groups actually participate in NPLD. We all know our groups are actively volunteering at other times, but NPLD provides a special opportunity. It has an accompanying national media campaign, and numerous resources for site managers such as pre-built ads and PSAs and instruction manuals on how to execute a successful project. Also, every registered site receives Public Land Passes for attending volunteers which are good for admission at any national park or public land fee area in the country. "Free" is one of the seven magic marketing words, and it attracts a lot of volunteers. Throw in sponsored free t-shirts, and it's easy to get a lot of volunteers.

It's easy to get media attention.

You get freebies for your volunteers.

It's a great day to "show-up" the greenies by out-volunteering them on our public lands.

It's a no brainer that every OHV group should be involved with NPLD, and I challenge UFWDA to encourage more associations/clubs/individuals to be involved next year. NPLD is always the last Saturday of September. Looking forward to September 27, 2008. Just take your nearest volunteer project date, and move it to NPLD (weather permitting). Our projects totaled around 2500 volunteer hours for NPLD. If we (4x4 community) could provide 50,000 volunteer hours on a single day across the country then that's an article I can get into the national mags.

I can tell you that at one point in time some to many of the OHV organizations were very leery of supporting National Public Lands day... some felt that supporting NPLD was giving credence to mostly those who wanted to close the ttrails and it would be better spent doing a National Trail Day or something along those lines. Plus many felt that a lot of areas that didn't have "public lands" for motorized rec would be left out or left to help in places they never used.

At one point in time I even wrote an article about it (tried to find it but seems it was not one that stayed around).

I am not saying it is right or wrong but many people do work on the same day and don't want it as part of the NPLD or still are following the old feeling that they should do their work on a different weekend which could contribute to the lack of npld articles.

Well actually I found some info on it from back in 2002 that was posted on Pirate4x4.Com!

A lot of the orgs got together and were working toward NOHVAD or National Off Highway Vehicle Appreciation Day... it was to coincide with NPLD but to provide work and detail on OHV related Projects and services..

Yes I was a promotor or it working at the time as a Delegate for SWFWDA and reporting on it for Rockcrawler.Com but it had support from many different entities at the time including SEMA, AMA, BRC, UFWDA etc.

Quote

The idea that was started here is a reality!! After seeing all the positive responses on the thread this spring, I sent a few e-mails out and got an amazing response! On a suggestion from the BRC, the name has been changed to National OHV Appreciation Day, NOHVAD, to broaden the scope of the event to cover more activities than just cleaning up. After doing some research, the date chosen for this is NPLD, National Public Lands Day, the last Sat. in Sept. each year. The groups that sponsor NPLD are the same one we work with to keep access to the areas we wheel in, Army Corp of Engineers, BLM, DOD, EPA, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Forest Service, National Park Service, and many others. What better day to show how we feel about recreating on public land than NPLD! There's not much planned for this year other than some smaller local events, but look out next year! There's just simply not enough time for promotion and organization for anything major this year. Work has already begun on organizing next years event to make it a huge showing of caring about our land and unity between all user groups. Anyone wanting to can still do something this year, Sept.28th, but, the big push will be for Sept. 27th '03. The list of supporters for this is-

SWFWDA- Terry Rust, James Clark

UFWDA- Carla Boucher, John Stewart

AMA- Carol Smith

BRC- Bill Dart, Del Albright

4x4 Wire.com- John Stewart

Jon Crowley- crowley-offroad.com

SEMA- Brian Caudill

Rockcrawler.com- Shawn Pagan

SHR 4x4 Club

Trail Krawlers 4x4

Off-road.com

Texas Motorized Trail Coalition

Texas Offroad Network

Friends of the Rubicon

Dennis Mitchell

Hopefully there'll be a web-site up soon for this and Carla Boucher is preparing press releases for before & after media submissions. Del Albright has also asked that anyone doing anything to please use the volunteer time forms available at the BRC web-site to record volunteer hours. Hopefully as things progress we get more support for this and anyone wanting to jump in is more than welcome to. The entire OHV community, reguardless of whether it's in a 4x4, mountain bike, mc, atv, horseback, whatever, needs to work together for our sport, and our ability to use public lands to survive.

This is a good friend of mine's post from RC. Please spread the word of this to the local clubs and organize a trail run, take along trash bags and anything else to help clean up the trails, and the environment in general.

Jeremy

More info if anyone wants to read it... both John (Stewart) and I were trying to promote NPLD back in '01 & '02.

Quote

SWFWDA has put together a committee to promote and drive National Off-Highway Appreciation Day (NOHVAD). The plan is to have it coincide with National Public Lands Day (NPLD - annually the 3rd Saturday of September) as a way to show appreciation from the OHV Community to those that manage and provide land and access for OHV Use.

A note from Robin Fickbohm - history, thoughts and ideas:

I figured since SWFWDA has picked up the ball with NOHVAD, and since I'm one of the instigators LaughingI'd put up a little history and explanation of it here for discussion and figure out how to make it a national success.

NOHVAD originated on a landuse forum about 2 years ago. The discussion came up about what we could do to help keep our land ours and NOHVAD was born. We felt we needed a day, holiday if you will, to give the OHV community something to rally around.

The environmentalists have Earth Day. Not a bad holiday, but a little too green for our needs so on a suggestion from Shawn Pagan and Terry Rust I did some research and came up with NPLD, National Public Lands Day. It's the 3rd Saturday of each Sept. and all of the major players involved with our sport and that manage public lands are active in that holiday, the BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corp of Engineers, just to name a few.

I figured there wasn't a better way to show them how much we care about our land than to share and support NPLD. The thought was that it would be difficult to rally the OHV community around a government holiday so create our own version of Earth Day, NOHVAD to share and support NPLD.

We need unity and strength in numbers if we want to successfully combat the environmentalists. That means all motorized/mechanized OHV users, not just limited to 4x4's. We do not have this kind of unity at any level, there are organizations that support all users (BRC, etc.) but there isn't any major event that tries to bring all users together in a mass showing of unity, that's where NOHVAD comes in.

One thing that makes the green side so effective is that they work together; you don't see as much public in-fighting between the green organizations as is seen between OHV users.

Dirtbike and quads don't want to work with us and I know a lot of 4x4 enthusiasts that feel the same about them. That attitude is going to kill our sport, the future of our sport is multi-use, multi-purpose, and until people begin to realize that, our sport doesn't stand much of a chance. For example, think of how much more effective the SWFWDA Robledo lawsuit might be if we also had the support and assistance from the AMA or other organized ATV groups.

I firmly believe that NOHVAD can be the "vehicle" to get us there. There is support for this on a national level, early on there was an e-mail list set up for it and list members and backers of NOHVAD include, Del Albright, BRC, Carla Boucher, Brad Ullrich, John Stewart, Shawn Pagan, Terry Rust, TMTC, and the Texas chapter of the AMA just to name a few.

The 1st year, '02, was pretty good, a lot of support and a major event at Tuttle Creek ORV in Kansas and one in Texas, I don't remember for sure where, but Dennis Mitchell spear-headed that one. Necy Wernli of Rock-It-Land.com also hosted a web-site for NOHVAD and 4x4wire did the mailing list and I believe John Stewart also brought it up at a NAMRC meeting and they were supportive as well.

'03 wasn't as good, the web-site and mailing list disappeared for unknown reasons and it kind of fell along the wayside. I don't fault anyone for anything as I am just as guilty as anyone for letting it slide. I, along with many others believe in NOHVAD and the positive effect it will have on the future of our sport, but I don't have the experience or knowledge to make it the success that it can be, that's why I brought it up at the quarterly and asked SWFWDA for help in making it a reality. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me!

Sounds good on the earlier NPLD efforts. I know some of the clubs here (in Utah) have been involved since the first year, and I'm sure other groups have been involved as well but we just don't know about it.

I would recommend against trying to brand another activity in addition to NPLD. Why dilute? NPLD is already there. We don't need anything other than our own publicity to shine the light on all the OHV projects being done. The 4x4 community was the ONLY user group that organized its own projects for NPLD in Utah. I can see the cover story for 4-Wheeler next year, "4x4 groups volunteer 50,000 hours for National Public Lands Day." It can happen if everyone would get involved. More service should be a central theme to everything we (and UF) do. I see a lot of clubs/associations organizing big runs, but not enough projects.

As to why there is a lack of OHV projects, it's a tough situation. Too much apathy and too few leaders. It's so easy to organize a project. A box of trash bags and some motivation are all it takes. There's no lack of trash on our public lands unfortunately. My goal is to organize an association project once per month. I know a lot of groups break their arms with pats on the back for doing one big project a year, but it's not nearly enough if we want to maintain our access.

I've considered implementing a volunteer rewards program. I'm not above buying volunteers for their time.

I've considered implementing a volunteer rewards program. I'm not above buying volunteers for their time.

Steve a volunteer reqards program is a great idea.. recognition and rewards are very helpful.

As for diluting NPLD, that wasn't my point. The point was simply that "at one point in time" groups were trying to do something that showed OHV cared but were not going to simply conform to the "greens" and that it may be a reason people don't do npld projects.

I agree with you that if someone can organize a way to do and catalog the ohv work across the country for npld it could make a great headline....